Interaction

The other class in the bundle contains all the material, with text and video lectures, lists, assignments (Suggestions.) If you have any questions about anything, want clarification about the statements in the lectures, or just want to rave about how great the genres are or how frustrating their ever-changing elusive, overlapping definitions are, you may email.

You may also email if you are working on a story for class and need guidance with plot arc, choosing POV, knowing if it's OK to have a positive/negative ending to fit the genre, etc.. Each genre implies a world-view, and you're welcome to discuss the philosophy, tell me about weird things that happened to you that made you wonder about the nature of reality just as in a Weird Tale, your sense cause and effect being distorted as in Magical Realism, etc. This is your chance to delve fully into the world of these wonderful ways of thinking.

The main bulk of the communications should be emailing me your stories once they are completed. You have six months to do so, so don't finish your rough draft and email it to me immediately, expecting detailed line edits of every typo and punctuation issue to make it ready for submission. Similarly, be careful about doing that when writing a story to submit to a publication or you'll most likely regret it.

Put it in a .doc (not docx or pdf, etc.) in 12 point Times New Roman double spaced Standard Manuscript Format just as if you were sending it to a publication (but you may leave off your address/phone) with your last name/its name/genre in the file and also in the subject line. Make sure you check spelling. No extra spaces between sentences or paragraphs. No comma splices. New paragraphs for each speaker. Imagine I am the editor of the journal you want to see your work in. I will mark every detail such as punctuation problems to prepare you to send it there.

I'll make my comments using Track Changes or Open Office's similar program, so be sure to have your viewing options turned on.

I will also read it many times over, being a good audience, appreciating the ideas, savoring the sentences, contemplating the implications, resonating with the emotions, empathizing with the characters. I'll let you know what I enjoy about it, if it engages me, and if I feel it's ready for submission. I'll let you know if I believe it fits into the category you've chosen for it.

You may let me know in your email if you think it fits more than one genre. You may also let me know your target publication if you have one. Give me a week to reply and if you don't hear a response, feel free to query.

Some of the sections in the class provide more than one Suggestion. For example, there are many types of Surrealism, and I lay out some of them as possibilities. You may send me 5 stories of any kind in any order. So you can do all the types of Surrealism, and more than one story of one of the types, and take up your entire course with Surrealistic fiction, or any of the other types, if you wish. Or you can do one of each kind in order. It's entirely up to you.

I'll carefully consider all the elements in your stories, such as believable dialog, a hook that grabs my attention and delivers me to the ending, fresh language, avoidance of cliche, showing rather than telling, rounded characters, logic, rising tension, 3 Act structure, pacing, number of characters with names we need to remember and how well you help us remember them through description, action, gestures, expressions.

If you've paid attention to the lectures and applied the ideas for writing narrative well, I may not need to suggest many improvements. That means we've succeeded. Congratulations to us both.

If I mark all over your story, that means I'm doing my job evaluating and editing everything that could use some reassessing and revision. All writers can use a trained eye on their work. If you have questions beyond what I marked, you're welcome to ask me.

There is some overlay and repetition between the ideas in the lectures and the videos as that hearing something said more than one way, in more than one medium, at different times, helps it sink in and attach to context. And it allows people who learn one way or the other better to get a significant bulk of the information.

I'd love to hear when your stories or later stories in this genre are accepted to journals and anthologies or win awards. I'll mention it in the newsletter.

All the lectures are downloadable for easy access and they are compact for printing. You may continue to comment using Disqus even after the 6 month ending period, uploading new stories for other students to comment on if they wish. They are not considered published. The best way have them give you feedback is to comment on theirs. After the 6 months is up, you retain the class even during times it is full and not available to the public. I teach through other venues as well and I won't take on new students in this class unless I'm confident I can give all the time and attention required to make it a great experience for you.

Class should be fun, inspiring, and help you enjoy a lifetime of publication success.

Cheers!

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